Installing Door Stay Reinforcement

[jyl]

I need to install the door stay reinforcement plates. I bought them from PP some months ago, but have procrastinated until now. Well, my door is making ominous creaking sounds and I daren't wait any longer.

Any tips or tricks I should know? Including for removing the door panels? I can't find my copy of 101 Projects so I'm going to be relying on my Bentley.

[RoninLB]

Originally posted by jyl

Any tips or tricks I should know? Including

I think Superman did this..

[Silveresrty911S]

Onr trick is to tie a piece of small string on the plate so you don't drop it down in the door as your trying to install. It's a little tedious, but well worth the door dings and saving it from the next level of fixing..welding.
It's about an hour job, I've done both of mine.

Rick

[jester911]

Removing the door panel will definitely help access. Before you install you need to check the sheet metal in the door where the old door stay attaches. The metal may be torn etc. You need to straighten the metal and flatten it out as much as possible to recieve the two plates of the repair kit.

After that it should go right together.

[Halm]

Be sure to lube up the new stay before you try to close the door the first time. The new stays are very tight and some guys even suggest polishing it down a bit before installing.

[Formerly Steve Wilkinson]

I just did this job, and it's a little harder than it seems. Not too hard, certainly, but there are a few tricks.

1/Taking the door panel off doesn't make the job easier, it's essential to doing the job at all. Maybe not 100-percent off, but you do need to get your hand inside the door.

2/When you first try to put the thick metal reinforcement plate into position on the door jamb through the small hole, you at first are convinced there's no way it's going to fit through the hole. Keep trying, keep jiggering, keep rotating it and you'll suddenly find a position where it slips into place.

3/Tying a strong string to that reinforcement piece is absolutely essential,and make sure it's a _strong_ string well-knotted. Chances are very good that you'll drop the piece the first time it slips through the hole, believe me. Do you then just pull it back out? Nope. It will almost certainly jam in place down inside the blind area between the door skins, and the only way you'll get it out is to spend about 10 minutes playing it like a fish, and finally something will happen that will release it. You will need a string strong enough to live through all that jerking and jiggling.

4/Tie the string not to the rectangular middle hole, as the directions recommend, but to the topmost of the two round boltholes. If you tie it to the rectangular hole, the reinforcement piece will fall in a lateral orientation rather than a longitudinal one, if ya get my drift, and that makes it much easier for it to jam.

5/Be sure to maintain the geometric orientation of the reinforcement pieces as shown in the directions. they can be affixed in two ways--with the short legs of the triangle facing in or facing out (in relation to the car), and only one way is correct.

6/If the same thing happens to you as happened to me, and I don't know why it happened--perhaps something to do with the fact that the door stay itself is now in a slightly different orientation to the car--you'll finish the job and try to close the door, and it'll feel as though it's jammed when you get the door within about three inches of the closed position. You simply have to be brave and force it closed, open and close it a few times and it'll "normalize" itself.

7/Removing the pin that secures the door stay to the door frame can be harder than the directions say. It sometimes doesn't just "push out." If it doesn't, take a long drift--about a foot long is good--and put it on the bottom of that pin and hit it with a heavy mallet, like a mason's hammer. The deadweight of the hammer is what does the job, and an ordinary 12-ounce carpenter's hammer might not do the job.

Stephan

[jyl]

Taking the panel off now. Hmm, there seems to have been a lot more glue involved than Bentley would have me believe ("unclip and remove" my a$$!)